Congruence and Incongruence in Adolescents’ and Parents’ Perceptions of the Family: Using Response Surface Analysis to Examine Links with Adolescents’ Psychological Adjustment

Abstract

Parents and adolescents often hold discrepant views about the family environment and these discrepancies may in turn influence adolescents' psychological adjustment. The current study examined how adolescent-parent perceptions of family routines and chaos, and their congruence and incongruence, relate to adolescents' self-reported psychological adjustment (depressive symptoms and perceived stress), both concurrently (N dyads = 261; 53 % female) and 2 years later (N dyads = 118; 50 % female). Using polynomial regression and response surface analysis, results indicated that adolescents' perceptions of the family environment were a stronger predictor of adolescents' adjustment than parents' perceptions (76 % mothers), concurrently and over time. However, both congruence and incongruence in adolescent-parent perceptions were also related to adolescents' adjustment. Specifically, congruently negative adolescent-parent perceptions were associated with worse concurrent adolescent adjustment. Further, incongruence defined by more negativity in adolescents' versus parents' perceptions was associated with worse adolescent psychological adjustment, concurrently and over time. In sum, in addition to the strong links between adolescents' perceptions of the family and their own psychological adjustment, examining how congruent and incongruent adolescents' perceptions are with parents' perceptions may shed additional light on how the family environment relates to adolescent adjustment.

Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Parent–Adolescent Discrepancies: Existing Findings and Future Directions

“…To cite just some examples from the articles in the Special Issue, Nelemans et al (2016) tested discrepancies in parent and adolescent perceptions about their relationship as predictors of adolescent-reported depression; Human et al (2016) focused on family routines and chaos as predictors of adolescent self-reported depression and perceived stress; Jager et al (2016) analyzed adolescents' perceptions of parental rejection as predictors of internalizing and externalizing problems as rated by mothers, fathers, and the adolescents themselves; Borelli et al (2016) used discrepancies in mothers and adolescents' ''we-talk'' in interviews following the child's participation in a standardized failure task as predictors of the adolescent's trait rumination measured before the task and cortisol reactivity following the task, as well as the mother's ''overcontrol'' during the task; Valdes et al (2016) tested maternal and adolescent ratings of maternal psychological control as predictors of adolescent anxiety and conduct problems as rated by both kinds of informant; Leung et al (2016) used reports of family functioning to predict adolescent beliefs in the future, resilience, cognitive competence, self-efficacy, and selfdetermination; and Ohannessian et al (2016) studied how convergence in ratings by mothers and adolescents regarding family communication and satisfaction predicted maternal psychological symptomatology. In short, the articles in this Special Issue address an impressive array of aspects of family functioning and a very diverse set of outcomes associated with these aspects of family functioning.…”

“…For example, Human et al (2016) used response surface analysis (RSA), which uses coefficients from polynomial regression to graphically depict patterns of congruence and incongruence for an independent variable (e.g., family chaos) and an outcome variable (e.g., teen depression). Córdova et al (2016) used longitudinal confirmatory factor analysis (LCFA) to determine if indicators of family functioning on six measures rated by parents and adolescents (focus on family communication, parent-adolescent communication, family cohesion, parental monitoring, parent support, and parent involvement) could be represented by a single latent variable for each kind of informant and if the CFA structure was stable over time.…”

Parental Self‐Efficacy for Reducing the Risk of Adolescent Depression and Anxiety: Scale Development and Validation

“…Given that the correlations between the PSES and parent report of adolescent symptoms were already quite low, it is unsurprising that correlations between the PSES and adolescent reports of their own symptoms were not significant. Discrepancies between adolescent and parent reports are not uncommon in parenting research (Bögels & Melick, ; De Los Reyes & Ohannessian, ; Human, Dirks, DeLongis, & Chen, ). However, this is contrary to findings by Steca et al.…”

Depression and Anxiety Symptoms in Female Adolescents: Relations with Parental Psychopathology and Parenting Behavior

“…Therefore, the stressor of parental symptoms of psychological problems may have been too mild compared to other studies that examined the relationships between parental clinical depression or anxiety disorders and depression and anxiety symptoms in adolescents (Lieb et al., ). In addition, earlier studies found that children's perceptions of the family environment are adequate and that children are influenced by their perceptions about parental attitudes and behavior, rather than by the actual parental behaviors or the behavior reported by parents (Demo, Small, & Savin‐Williams, ; Human, Dirks, DeLongis, & Chen, ; Tein, Roosa, & Michaels, ). In this study, parents reported about their own psychopathology, and that might have contributed to not finding a relationship, especially because levels of parental psychopathology were low.…”